HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



and variety rare indeed among persons born in the 

 peasant class. She entertains the visitor, or takes the 

 leading part, and her slow-witted sisters regard her 

 with a kind of puzzled admiration. They are sisters, 

 yet unrelated: their very blood differs in specific 

 gravity, and their bodily differences correspond to a 

 mental and spiritual unlikeness. In my intercourse 

 with people in the southern counties I have sometimes 

 been reminded of Huxley and his account of his parents 

 contained in a private letter to Havelock Ellis. His 

 father, he said, was a fresh-coloured, grey-eyed War- 

 wickshire man. " My mother came of Wiltshire people. 

 Except for being somewhat taller than the average type, 

 she was a typical example of the Iberian variety dark, 

 thin, rapid in all her ways, and with the most piercing 

 black eyes I have seen in anybody^ head. Mentally 

 and physically (except in the matter of the beautiful 

 eyes) I am a piece of my mother, and except for my 

 stature ... I should do very well for a * black Celt ' 

 supposed to be the worst variety of that type." 



The contrast between persons of this type and Saxon 

 or blonde has often seemed to me greatest in childhood, 

 since the blonde at that period, even in Hampshire, 

 is apt to be a delicate pink and white, whereas the 

 individual of strongly-marked Iberian character is very 

 dark from birth. I will, to conclude this perhaps im- 

 prudent chapter, give an instance in point. 



Walking one day through the small rustic village 

 of Martyr Worthy, near Winchester, I saw a little 



